President Trump recently announced he would impose a new across-the-board tariff on all steel and aluminum imports into the United States. That was the harshest of three tariff options outlined by the Department of Commerce in a trade investigation report presented to the president.
During her debate with Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton implored, "please, fact checkers, get to work." Heeding her own call, her boast that while she was seretary of state exports to China increased 50 percent definitely needs to be put in context.
For nearly three decades, politicians, pollsters, and pundits have considered support for ethanol a litmus test for legitimacy in Iowa presidential politics. Former Vice President Al Gore, who won the Iowa Democratic caucuses in 2000, famously explained the strategizing over ethanol policies that…
The Obama administration on June 2 convened the White House Forum on Antibiotic Stewardship, “to bring together key human and animal health constituencies involved in antibiotic stewardship.” The White House billed this meeting—to which more than 150 companies were invited—as furthering previous…
Under the nation’s biofuels policy known as the Renewable Fuel Standard, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is supposed to set an amount of biofuels—ethanol, biodiesel, and low carbon advanced biofuels—which are to be blended into the nation’s fuel supply. That amount is to be finalized by…
The dictionary defines a deadline as “the latest time or date by which something should be completed.” The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency obviously defines it another way, at least when it comes to renewable fuels.
The president just signed into law the Agricultural Act of 2014, a multiyear, comprehensive agricultural, rural, and nutrition policy measure. As legislation goes, it was rather unremarkable. What was remarkable was the path it followed to approval. Unlike most farm bill debates, which tend to be…
Just before the August congressional recess the House Energy and Commerce Committee issued a press release on its progress in reviewing the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), the nation’s biofuels policy. Since 2005 the RFS has established an annual mandate for the amount of renewable biofuels that…
The NBA franchise in New Orleans is, long overdue, considering a name change. This is a good thing—even though the proposed nickname Pelicans has been the target of an unfair amount of derision since being floated. To be sure, it’s not slick. It’s not modern. And it is not hip, like the singular…
At last night’s debate, President Obama said gas prices were under two dollars per gallon when he took office because the “economy was on the verge of collapse.” And that if Mitt Romney were elected he “could bring down gas prices, because with his policies we might be back in the same mess.”
A food versus fuel debate has raged for the past few years as ethanol consumes more and more of the U.S. corn supply. Ethanol will use about 40 percent of the U.S. corn crop this year, and for the first time ever, more corn will go into motor fuel production than into feed for livestock. As the…
In a moment of candor after his political career had ended, former vice president Al Gore averred that his support of ethanol was in part driven by “a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president.” Gore, it should be noted, cast the tie-breaking…
Under the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA), the EPA is required to make a determination by November 30 of each year about the projected volume of cellulosic ethanol that will be available in the next calendar year. If the projected volume is less than volume mandated by the 2007…
In a late campaign move intended to wrap up Iowa once and for all (looks like it may have worked), Barack Obama recently announced his plan to increase by two-thirds the federal mandate for ethanol and other renewable fuels. John McCain, unfortunately, may have missed a chance to effectively…
Jay Cost of the "HorseRaceBlog" on RealClearPolitics.com delved into an area where few mainstream political commentators tread--farm state politics. His post was entitled: " Does McCain Have a Rural Problem? "
In all the analysis, commentary, reaction, second guessing and prognosticating on the impact of John McCain's choice of Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, her most obvious area of experience and expertise is being strangely negelected: She is the only candidate among the four on the…
WASHINGTON IS IN THE MIDST of a food fight--a "food versus fuel" fight to be more exact. At issue is the Energy Independence and Security Act that mandates the use of 36 billion gallons of biofuels between now and 2022. That schedule is known as the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS). The concept of…
AS SENATE MAJORITY leader, Lyndon Johnson used to attribute the politics of the dairy industry to the fact that every state had "at least one dairy cow and two senators." But today, with the global expansion of agricultural trade, Johnson's adage would have to be amended to note that many foreign…
THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION is busily at work on a plan that would expand the use of ethanol and other so-called renewable fuels well beyond the 7.5 billion gallons by 2012 already mandated in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. President Bush himself is laying the ground work, touring ethanol plants,…
KUDOS to House Speaker Dennis Hastert for insisting that the Christmas tree on the Capitol lawn be designated, once again, the Capitol Christmas Tree. Political correctness had worked to re-dub it a "Holiday Tree" in recent years. Hastert's edict that Congress simply recognize the obvious by using…
FARM POLICY usually peaks as an issue in the presidential campaign a year before the election, in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses. But with Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Ohio among the most fiercely contested of the battleground states, this year could be an exception.
DEMOCRATIC FRONTRUNNER Howard Dean is going for broke. Not content merely to do respectably in Iowa, as other New Englanders seeking the White House have done in the past, he is the only one of the nine Democratic presidential candidates to have campaigned in every single county in Iowa. What's…
UNLESS THE REPUBLICAN CONGRESS rouses itself and finds its nerve, the Environmental Protection Agency will issue absurd and indefensible new regulations next month. These regulations, devised under the Clean Air Act, will impose stringent new requirements on potential sources of ozone and " fine…
FOR FIVE DAYS LAST WEEK, the politics of food, population, and the environment was played out in Rome. The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), a branch of the United Nations, convened a World Food Summit. It was rather like a sequel to the 1994's U.N. Population Conference, held in Cairo.…